Windows Low Vision: Cursor

In this series, we've spent time exploring many of Windows accessibility features that let us personalize our computer. Many of us find making even a small adjustment can make a huge difference.

Today's topic certainly fits that category. We'll be exploring various controls to change the appearance of our text cursor. Now before we jump in, let's talk about the difference between a cursor and a pointer.

Put simply, the cursor is the blinking vertical bar that shows the position in our text when we're typing characters. The pointer is usually shaped like an arrow. It moves on our computer screen as we move our mouse or track pad. It's sometimes called the mouse pointer. Be sure to check out the mouse pointer workshop in this series. You'll learn all about some cool features to make your mouse pointer easier to see.

Let's get started by opening ease of access. We'll use the keyboard shortcut of Windows and the letter U. We do that by holding down the Windows key, and then we tap and release the letter U. A handy tip, think of the word usable. Since the options we're talking about make our computer more usable, this will help us remember our shortcut.

From here, we select Text cursor in the left pane. Moving to the right pane, we find our first control, a toggle switch. When we select it with our mouse or press the space bar, we turn the text cursor indicator on and off.

Let's have a look at a document in Notepad to see our new tool at work. I'll press Alt + Tab to switch between our settings and Notepad. Our text cursor looks a little different, doesn't it? The usual vertical bar now has a small marker at the top and bottom of the bar. When we enter text in our document, the text cursor is easier to see as it moves along. This cool feature also works in File Explorer, browser edit fields, and Microsoft Word and other text editors. Unfortunately at this point, it does not work in the address bar of Chrome, Edge, or Firefox.

Our next group of controls allows us to customize the size and color of our text cursor. We also have a preview window that shows us the changes in real time as we make them. Let's give it a look. Under the preview window, we use the mouse pointer to select and drag the control along the slider bar. We can also use our arrow keys.

As we move to the right, the indicator gets bigger. No surprise when we move it to the left, it gets smaller. The next control lets us choose a color for the indicator. If we don't see a color we like in the suggested colors, we can select the pick a custom color button to open a full color palette. We use our mouse pointer to choose a color. We can vary the shade of the color by selecting and sliding the slider bar below the palette. We can use the pointer or our arrow keys to move the slider bar.

Once we've picked our color, we select the done button or press the enter key to close the palette. Let's switch back to our Notepad document to see our new text cursor. I'll press Alt + Tab to open Notepad, and now we see our text cursor is larger and a different color than before. I love the fact that we have an unlimited number of color choices to choose from.

Let's switch back and move down the page to our last control. Here, we can change the thickness of our text cursor. Once again, Windows provides a handy little preview window to see our changes in real time. To change the thickness, we drag the control along the slider bar. We can either use our mouse pointer or our arrow keys to move it to the right or left.

Let's have a quick look back in our Notepad document. We now see our text cursor is much thicker and easier to see. If it's a little too thick, we can easily change it with our text cursor control.

All of these features in Windows lets us customize the settings to meet our visual needs. In today's workshop, we explored Windows text cursor settings. I'm Vikki Vaughan, and I thank you for joining me.